When I started this section on reviewing things, I said that I would review people too. Well,Ive never done it yet. The first person that I am going to write about is Richard P. Feynman. I’m sure some fo the regulars on sneaker.org have already noticed the barrage of quotes and references to books and things by Feynman on here. But before I get started, I’ll point out that I am writing this not because I think of myself as “Feynman-fan,” but solely because I cannot express well enough how much respect I have for this one individual as a person (even more so than as a physicist) (In fact, you’re invited to check out my recent rant on The Fan Syndrome to see what I think of that…)

Unfortunately, I never had and never will have the chance to meet Richard Feynman in person (he died in 1988) and so my only exposure to his work and his person has been through is books and books about him. Therefore, the opinions I have developed are based on that information.

I think I first read Feynman’s book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman when I was twelve or so. I don’t have an exact recollection of when it was, but that time sounds about right. I read it again a couple of weeks ago — because I remembered how much I’d enjoyed reading it, but had forgotten a lot of the details. And reading it agan was about as enthralling as the first time. I think what fascinated me about Feynman at that time was how smart this person was and yet at the same time, so down to earth and so cool. So unlike most “smart” people. It is where I first learnt that there is a place called MIT. A place called Princeton. A place called Cornell and a place called Caltech. It is what got me started to think about whether I could one day go to a University of the same calibre.

This time when I read Feynman’s book, I wasn’t as much in awe of the great Universities or the amazing achievements he had (Not because they aren’t amazing, but because I already knew of them) but more so in awe of Feynman as a person. A person who truly had a great mind. A mind which was open, and always thinking. A mind for someone who could talk not only about why things are the way they are at a sub-atomic, heck a sub-neucleic level, but also talk about why things are the way they are in society, religion, culture and life.

Thought I cannot be certian of this now since I don’t remember well enough, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Feynman’s books that I read when I was an adolescent played a significant part in shaping my views on questioning everything and trying to learn as much as possible.

All I can say is for anyone who likes to think, you owe it to your mind to read Feynman. And to Richard Feynman – Thank you.

I’ve discovered a new favorite fruit. Fresh Kiwis! It’s really an amazing little fruit Now of course I only took a liking to Kiwis because of the Mad Mex Kiwi Margs that I’ve written so much about already. But recently, for my New Year’s Eve party I decided to try Kiwi Margs at home and so picked up two packs of Kiwis from Sam’s Club of all places. And man were the Kiwis good. Really good. So good, the *I* actually peeled them myself to eat them.

Apparently, Kiwis are very nutritionally rich as well and are essentially overall “good fruit.” Plus, they make a damn good margarita 😉

Okay, I’ll admit it up front. I’m a gadget freak. Not just any gadgets… electronic gadgets. In my book, if it’s not ggo something to do with hardware or electronics, it just ain’t cool. But that said, I don’t like “owning gadgets” as much as I enjoy checking them out — because if I own them, then I can’t look at the new stuff and the cooler stuff that’s out there and in this business, things change quickly! Very quickly!

I’d been out of the consumer electronic space for a while and so recently got an excuse to jump back in a take a closer look. The excuse of course was that when I returned to Pittsburgh from New Delhi, I was TV-less, since we needed a TV at the office to hook up to the video conferencing system and of course to hook up to the Nintendo! 🙂 Besides, I think by now everyone knows that I’ll never get something new as long as the previous thing is still functional (every once in a while I’m half hoping that my notebook at home dies on me so I have an excuse to go get one of the new slim and sleek ones and dump this brick… but alas, I keep managing to fix it everytime so far!)

So I’ve spent my free time in te past week looking at gadgets and gizmos. Very cool gadgets and gizmos. I checked out the Phillips 42″ Plasma TV, the Sony 57″ High Definition TV (Wide screen, projection), the Sony VAIO SuperSlim notebook, several DVD players, receivers, decoders, and of course speakers. I like speakers. Speakers are cool. Speakers make a BIG different. And trust me… Bose may be the most outrageously priced speakers you will ever find, but they are a class apart. There is no doubting it.

It’s a little late right now, but I’ll update this post soon with the links of some of the stuff I checked out. Toys are cool 🙂

The last time I was in LA nearly about a year ago, I drove past a place called Wolfgang Puck’s Cafe on Sunset Boulevard right by Sunset Strip. For some reason, that place stuck in my mind as a landmark and so this time I decided to actually go check it out. And as far as restaurants go, it was a lot more like my kind of place than some of the other places I ate at while in LA.

I prefer the more laid-back and fun atmosphere for dining any day as compared to a high-falutin, snobbish restaurant. For starters the food at a high-falutin restaurant is generally not my type… I’m not interested in eating escargot (I head a good one once — why do they call them escargot? Because no one would eat them if they were called snails!) or eels, or calamari or any sch stuff that is considered exotic. Chicken is about as exotic as I get! 🙂 My problem with the more exotic foods is totally psychological… the image of the animal being eaten comes into my head and totally turns me off. Except in the case of chicken where I have succeeded in conditioning myself to dissociate boneless chicken from the image of an actual chicken with its head being cut off — note I said boneless!

Anyhow, so as I drove from one end of Sunset Blvd to the other I decided on a whim to actually stop @ Wolfgang Puck’s for lunch. I liked the atmosphere. Nice and lively and definitely non-stuffy. The bartender served a good Sapphire Tonic with the pre-requisite two limes (you’d be amazed at how many leave out the second lime). They were reasonable priced for California standards. Service was quick and the Spicy Chicken Pizza that I ordered was actually really good. So everything was going really well, except as it always happens, I got a small piece of bone in my chicken 🙁 But still once I got past the bone crunching in my teeth, the Pizza was great, the food was great and the atmossphere was great. I’d definitely go back there again and hope that the bone was only an unfortunate oversight which won’t repeat itself!

hmm.. I guess if there was no bone, Wolfgang Puck’s would have gotten a full thumbs up. But I think I’ll have to give them a partial thumbs up for now!

Oh and on a similar note, another place I dined at in LA was a restaurant called Typhoon (see the article about Typhoon I found on the web while writing this blog…) at the Santa Monica County Airport. Cool location — right off the run way so you can see the private planes taking off and landing. The food was a different story altogether. My friend actually ordered (and ate them for that matter!) Frogs Legs! They also had a whole section on the menu titled “Insects” — yup that’s exactly what I was looking for. Most of the more — I was going to say exotic, but I think eccentric would be a better choice — eccentric foods are always deep fried… I guess once you fry it, it all tastes the same… be it frogs legs, ants, cockroaches, crickets and whatever else people eat — I had read far enough to already kill my appetite!

The food at Typhoon was not to my liking — I guess after seeing the menu and seeing the things both on our table and others I doubt anything would have been to my liking that evening! 😉 So at most I can give it a thumbs flat.

While I was in LA, two friends of mine invited me to accompany them to a party — so I can see what partying is like in LA. Being halloween it was a costume party of course. So my friends show up dressed in glow-in-the-dark afro wigs and calf-length trousers… both husband and wife were dressed as Mozart! Along with them another friend who was wearing a clown mask and a huge afro-wig. So when I stepped into their car at in the foyer of the Beverly Hilton, needless to say quit surprised! But my surprise would soon be outdone by the amount of time, effort people at the party had put into their costumes.

The party was itself held in a warehouse converted to a loft in downtown L.A. And from what my friends told me, the area wasn’t one to be caught in after hours. The loft/warehouse though was ultra-cool. Very open, minimal furniture, large Proxima projectors — talk about big screen TV. Very smply but tastefully done.

And this party was kind of like the party which kept on going… at first there was one room, which was large, but nothing surprising. But then, you walk into the back and it opens into a whole other area! And that wasn’t it, there was an open-air area too. By now I though I had seen all of it and then later in the evening doors to other “party-locations” seem to appear out of no where! It just kept going on and on and on!

The women at the party were literally drop dead gorgeous, especially dressed in their mostly skin tight and skimpy outfits! Ones which deserve special mention are: the one dressed as an FBI agent, one as Lara Croft, “the naughty nurse” and even someone who came dressed as a shower! But in my ook the award for the best costume goes to Superwoman and her sidekick the Superdog (or Superbitch?) both of whom were adorned in their appropriate costume. Superdog of course was an 8 month old german-shepherd mix — Maya (got the dog’s name, but not the owners!)– who was very friendly and was literally boogie-ing on the dance floor with everyone!

It’s been a long time since I went to a real party. In fact the last one that I can remember going to and having fun at was actually my own party back in Delhi which is the subject of an article in itself. Anyhow, it was good to finally get back into a scene which is totally full of fun and no restraints. I’d go back to LA just to go to another party like this. Definitely the highlight of the trip!